love had caught him out of triviality
by HannahPelham
Summary: Henry Talbot muses on life with Lady Mary Crawley. Only spoiler for the film is the name of Henry and Mary's child, title from Maurice by E M Forster Enjoy? Buy me a coffee! - /hannahpelham


Lady Mary Crawley had taken Henry Talbot by surprise. He supposed he must have been looking for love, a young, handsome racing driver in an increasingly modern world, but he hadn't expected Lady Mary Crawley to be the one to bring it to him. He supposed he would have fallen in love with some young society flapper called Christabel or Madeleine or something equally long with her whole life ahead of her. A widowed daughter of an Earl with a young son? Not quite what he expected, but he wasn't going to complain. He guessed she was probably the best thing to ever happen to him. Without her, he wouldn't be the doting stepfather to George that he was, he certainly wouldn't have set up a car showroom with Tom Branson. He guessed he'd probably be dead in a ditch somewhere, in a racing crash not unlike Charlie's. It was thanks to Lady Mary Crawley, or Lady Mary Talbot as she now was, that he was alive. She was still fast asleep, and Henry watched as her chest rose and fell, the silky sheets catching the early morning sun.

Their wedding in late summer, swiftly followed by the new business, Edith's becoming a Marchioness, and the news of a baby Talbot on the way meant Henry Talbot had started 1926 with a lot on his mind. Being married to Mary was wonderful, and living at Downton Abbey with her was wonderful. He had something to keep him occupied with Tom, whom he admired greatly. When Mary had told him about Tom and Sybil's story, and the tragedy that unfolded in the house just five years earlier, he had felt a surge of emotion, a huge amount of respect for Tom. He looked at little Sybbie, a sweet child who adored and was adored by everyone, and wondered how Tom coped seeing a tiny version of his late wife running around. He thought the same about Mary and Matthew, and little George. In a short space of time, he'd become incredibly fond of George, a smart, sensible boy with a mind of his own, very obviously inherited from his dear Mama.

Mary knew what she wanted, and Henry appreciated and admired that. She knew what she had to do to keep the estate running just the way she wanted it, so she did it. She had get up and go. She would never be content to sit around gossiping all day, drinking tea. That was never what Henry wanted from a wife. He wanted a modern, inspiring wife. He wanted her to be his equal, and Mary certainly was. Mary was perhaps more modern and up to date than he was, despite spending most of her life in the Yorkshire countryside.

She didn't blend into the background either, something Henry was immensely grateful for. He considered himself an outgoing kind of fellow, and anything other than a vivacious wife could have provided some issues when out and about in society London. Dining at the Ritz is an awful fuss is one has to ask for a table in the corner because one's wife is a shy kind of thing. Luckily, Mary never provided such an issue. In the months between their marriage and Edith's christmas wedding, they'd dined with friends such as Evelyn Napier a few times, staying with Rosamund. The battle to convince Mary to sell Crawley House and buy somewhere smaller for them and their hopefully growing brood was half won when they realised that the Talbot on the way had been conceived on one such London visit.

All in all, Henry Talbot considered himself a very lucky man. 1926 was going to be exciting, personally and professionally, and Downton Abbey seemed like the best place in the world to be.

The day Caroline Talbot was born proved to Henry that Downton Abbey was everything and anything to him. Mary's pregnancy had been easy, based at the Abbey and Downton cottage hospital. Henry was remarkably calm about the whole thing, until Mary went into labour, of course.

Mary stayed calm. She'd done this before, of course. She'd done it before and knew what to expect. Henry suddenly felt all the panic he supposed he should have felt over the preceding nine months. Everything went into overdrive. For a start, much to Dr Clarkson's dismay, he refused to leave Mary's side.

"Henry, don't be daft, listen to Dr Clarkson and go and have a drink, we'll be a while yet" Mary had said, raising an eyebrow at her husband in between contractions.

"I shan't be able to sit still, darling. I'll annoy everybody. It's best I stay here and let you squeeze my hand into oblivion and stay out of everybody else's way" Henry replied, trying to reason with her. He wanted to be there when his child was born, was that so strange?

Mary relented fairly quickly, when she realised that squeezing Henry's hand so tight that she may have broken some of the bones felt very much like adequate payback for the amount of pain Henry had caused her by getting her pregnant in the first place.

Holding his baby daughter for the first time was something Henry made sure to never forget. He wouldn't have minded if they had had a son, of course, but they had George, who was very much a son to Henry, and he fancied a new challenge. With the arrival of Caroline, Henry realised how happy he was having given up racing. If he hadn't been sure before, then he certainly was from the minute he held Caroline in his arms. If anything happened to him and Caroline and George and Mary were left without him, well, if a dead entity could feel immense amounts of guilt, he was sure he'd feel it.

Watching Robert and Cora coo over Caroline, showing her off to Violet and Rosamund made Henry feel like he belonged. He finally belonged somewhere, with his wife and children and he had never and would never be happier.


End file.
